Katy Perry is back on top, once again enjoying the view from the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 Chart. Her new album, Prism, isn't just Perry's second number one album though, it also carries the distinction of being the highest selling album of the year, from a female entertainer.

Katy Perry
Perry scored her second number one with Prism

This is according to the result compiled by Nielsen in the week ending Sunday, 27 October, published by Billboard. Perry's immediate success overshadows Miley Cyrus' success with Bangerz, which previous held the top selling female artist distinction. Whilst Bangers scored a cool 270,000 sales at the first attempt at the beginning of the month, Prism managed to sell 286,000 copies in the first week. With 339,000 copies sold in the first week, only Daft Punk's Random Access Memoires has sold more records in it's debut week in 2013, and we still have two months worth of competition to look forward to.

With her album out in November, Lady Gaga holds a genuine threat of replace Perry as the top selling artist of the year with ARTPOP. For all this immediate success, Justin Timberlake is still the highest selling artist of the year thanks to his 20/20 Experience collection.

Miley Cyrus
Cyrus previously held the record for highest selling female

Not to take anything away from Perry's success, but her place at the top spot was all but guaranteed given how poorly everyone else in the chart did. Whilst her less-than-300,000 figure would have probably scored her a number one spot anyway, the fact that Prism outsold the Nos. 2-9 albums combined will have come in handy in securing that place at the top. In total, just 4.49 million albums were sold last week, the lowest album sales figure in the SoundScan-era (1991 - present). This is the second time in a year that album sales have reached record lows, with the dubious achievement being recorded on the week ending 15 September.

The top five is made up of most of last week's top five, with ex-No. 1 Lightening Bolt by Pearl Jam coming in second, with sales down 72%. Drake's Nothing Was The Same landed in third place, whilst Bangerz dropped to No. 4. Remarkably, Lorde's Pure Heroine managed to climb into the top five (up from 7th) despite her sales falling since last week, down 16%. Lorde also climbed back to the top of teh singles chart with 'Royals.'

The full details are available at Billboard.

Katy Perry tall
Perry could still be ousted for the top by Lady Gaga